In 2003, a survey of clusters of galaxies
made using data acquired by the ROSAT x-ray satellite showed what seems to be a huge
concentration of matter some 12 billion light years across. Such a huge concentration
would take at least several hundred billion years to form, 30 times longer than the time
since the supposed Big Bang.

The results show that the abundance of clusters of galaxies falls
off suddenly, by about a factor of ten, at a redshift of 0.59. The researchers who
initially made the survey (which is reported at arXiv:astro-ph/0303438) tried to explain
this sudden fall as "evolution", that there were suddenly ten times as many
clusters, since closer distances translate to more recent times.

But if that were true, the evolution would have taken about 180
million years, a tiny time for huge clusters of galaxies to form. In addition, if the
evolution theory were right, the drop-off in cluster abundance would appear at the exact
same redshift (or distance) in every direction. But in reality, in the half of the sky,
the abrupt transition to low density occurs at z=0.59, while in the other half it occurs
at z=0.55. This would be easy to explain on the basis of our location being 5% closer to
one edge of the concentration than to the other, but would be impossible to explain on the
basis of evolution.

It would seem that the data, if taken without preconceived
biases, indicates the edge of a vast concentration of matter about 4Gpc--12 billion light
years-- across, outside of which the density of matter is a factor of ten less. If the
fractal distribution observed at scales up to 100 Mpc continues to GPC scales, this is to
be expected. But it is a grave contradiction to the Big Bang.

A second group of discoveries announced at the January, 2004
American Astronomical Society meeting showed that the universe looks very similar at high
redshifts, and therefore billions of years ago, as it does today, in sharp contraction to
the Big Bang idea that a younger universe will look far different. The large scale
structures that exist today also existed at redshifts corresponding to three billion years
after the hypothetical date of the Big Bang. Such structures had only one quarter as much
time to grow, posing even sharper contradictions for the BB. In addition, galaxies from
that 10-billion-years-ago epoch appear to have a similar distribution of stellar ages and
a similar amount of chemical elements produced by stars as our present-day galaxy. If the
Big Bang had really happened, galaxies should appear much younger, with little heavy
metals and mostly young stars. Instead they look much the same as today--yet another black
eye for the idea that the universe had an origin in time.